Digital marketing is a broad spectrum of opposing skill sets that people and professionals have to learn in order to be capable of creating captivating new content that catches the attention of their specific target audience.
A website is one of the biggest contributing factors towards a successful uptrend in the number of customers/ clients that you convert and retain over time.
Yet, generating an industry-leading profile through your website takes a whole host of skills… which can become quite confusing, especially when you consider the two terms web design and web development.
In today’s blog, we’re going to be delving into the differences between web design and web development to help you assemble an all-around excellent website for the consumer's experience.
What Does a Web Designer's Role Entail?
Website designers work on many different elements in their job role, with the main goal of forging a visually appealing website for all users to enjoy when they eventually click through.
It is not just the visual facets that web designers appreciate, but creating an accessible and user-friendly website has to be a main priority throughout the process.
This can consist of creating a layout that a user will be able to easily navigate and know exactly where they need to go next in order to make the payment that the company of the website desires.
Although this is the broad goal of a web designer, there are 3 types of web designers that all have specialities worth talking about. Here are the responsibilities of each web designer type:
User Interface Designer (UI)
UI designers (also known as user interface designers) specialise in devising an easy-to-use website to improve the conversions and session length of your interested customers/ clients. UI designers focus on making a functional website that has the sole purpose of helping the company with its goal, whether that be engagement, traffic or sales.
User Experience Designer (UX)
UX designers (also known as user experience designers) have the primary responsibility of using the design software to generate a human-centred and structured website path.
Before assembling their say in the website design, they hone in on what has worked in the past for previous companies in the same niche and present clients with data-driven, high-converting websites.
Visual Designers
Visual designers use their unmatched creativity to design an aesthetically pleasing website that users look forward to scrolling through.
Depending on the CMS (content management system), visual designers will use their trusted resources such as advanced editing software, graphic design software, etc to create sleek images or videos for display on the company's website.
The Skillset of a Web Developer
A web developer has a core understanding of an enormous quantity of highly specialised work such as programming languages, server hosting, advanced coding, etc in order to portray what the web designer wants the website to look like from a consumer's perspective.
Without these finer details, the website wouldn’t be able to be published for everyone to see. Having a load of exciting visual features won't matter if you don’t have the technical knowledge of how to effectively bring it to life via code.
There will typically be a lot of fixes with servers, usability, and structure that website developers will have to take care of from the front end, back end and even the full stack. Below, we’ll break down the three types of website development experts that you can work with:
Front-End
Front-end website development is where a professional codes the website that is viewed by the customers/ clients via HTML, CSS and Javascript and the CMS provided (such as WordPress, Elementor, Webflow, etc). With this being viewed by the consumers, web designers and web developers have a lot of communication during the front-end process.
Back End
Back-end developers have more free reign with their specialist skills as it is typically something that a web designer will know nothing about. They concentrate on databases, server hosting, and programming languages using many technical pieces of software that the consumer doesn’t see… but keep the website running smoothly behind the scenes.
Full-Stack
At this point, you may have already made an educated assessment that full-stack developers combine both front-end and back-end development to create a structured partnership between what the customers/ clients see and don’t see when clicking through to their desired website.
Web Design vs Web Development: The Main Differences
Web designers and developers certainly have a communicational aspect between them to present the website in the right way for the audience that is viewing it - but there is certainly a multitude of differences when you compare the two.
In this section, we’re going to be going through web design vs web development and picking out the key contrasting job responsibilities so you don’t have to. Here are the key differences:
- Web designers have to have an extremely creative and user-friendly way of presenting their ideas through a website. Whereas, a web developer has to have much more technical knowledge and a structured mindset to ensure that what needs to be done… gets done.
- Web designers focus on how the website is going to visually please and convert the audience through their human-centric approach. Instead, web developers assure that everything that the designer wants can be achieved through technical coding and advanced programming.
- Web designers and developers will use different tools and software for their specialities. For example, developers will use coding/ programming/ server platforms such as Java, C#, Jira, provided CMS, etc. Whereas, designers will use editing software such as Adobe, Photoshop and website builders/ CMS for their operations.
Overall, these two highly-regarded and favoured services on the market right now have their unique benefits but both work in unison to give the customer/ client the best website experience possible.
Without these two high-performing job roles, we would not see the powerful yet engaging websites we do on the internet as we know it today.
So in an ideal world, you'll have access to a high calibre of both web designers and web developers for your next new website project. But both come with high salaries and are in short supply.
Hence, if you’re looking for an elite-level web developer or web designer, you can contact us here at Fuelius as we have top-of-the-line performers in both instances. The perks of working with an external agency for your web redesign or re-build mean you can get the very best talent out there working on your project, with a huge range of technical expertise on hand.
If you're interested in learning more about our web development services, check out the links below:
- An overview of our web development experience
- Expertise in HubSpot CMS (Elite Partner)
- Expertise in Umbraco CMS (Gold Partner)
- Useful asset: Website Brief Template
- Book a free consultation call to learn more
